


all the blood i lost with you

by apolliades



Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Gun Violence, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, as in it isn't confirmed, so if you want feel free to read it as non-death, the death is ambiguous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 10:32:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5582308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apolliades/pseuds/apolliades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>You take his face in your hands and make him look at you. Your hands leave red prints on his white cheeks.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“You’re going to be fine,” you tell him. You lie.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the blood i lost with you

**Author's Note:**

> title from [my blood](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0rMQg5kcyE) which i feel is kind of fitting for bond & q

_In the end, he was a little moth, and you were the brightest, most terrible flame._

_\--_

“Stop. Stop! You’re making it worse! For God’s sake, can’t you see you’re hurting him!”

Her nails are short and neat but they’re sharp on your wrists and the backs of your hands as she tries to pry them away from him. They leave raised red welts that might hurt, if you weren’t so numb.

“James, stop it!”

It’s something about the sound of your first name in her voice. As though she shouldn’t be able to say it. As though if he can’t, no one should.

You hit her. She gasps and stumbles. You feel guilt, somewhere, a sharp little pang of it, but it barely registers. It barely scratches the surface. It’s like there’s so much else to feel, you don’t know where to start. There’s too much to feel it all at once.

The sound of his breathing is the worst thing you’ve ever heard. It’s ragged and wet and his throat clicks with each struggling inhale. It’s the sound of air making it into his mouth but not reaching his lungs. It’s ugly and awful. No living creature should make a sound like that.

“Darling, stop.”

The sound of his voice is worse but it means he’s awake, and it makes your heart swoop with sick giddy elation. It makes your hands go still.

“You’re hurting me.”

He can barely whisper. You can hear the blood in his throat. It bubbles terribly and bursts on his lips. This time the guilt is so strong it’s like being hit. It’s crushing you.

It’s his hands over yours, now. His thumb brushes the welts in your skin. It might hurt. You can’t feel it. His gaze is unfocused but he’s looking at you.

“I’m sorry,” you tell him. As if it could help. “I’m so sorry.”

His mouth moves with words you can’t hear. You’re not even sure if he spoke at all. You lean closer, so you can feel his hot unsteady breath on your face. But he doesn’t try to speak again. You wish you could hold him, but you don’t. You don’t want to risk moving him.

Instead you stroke his hair out of his face and kiss his knuckles. Both his hands and yours are slick with blood and now your mouth is, too, and you can feel it running warm down your chin. You don’t want to let go of him to wipe it away.

He smiles. His lips are blue.

\--

_The first time you kiss him you’re using him. You want something from him. You don’t want him. Just something he can give you. You just want him to break the rules for you, and it’s so easy, to put your hands on his waist and your mouth on his neck and feel him melt. You almost don’t feel bad, until you pull away, and he’s looking at you like you’re everything, and you’re looking at him like he’s nothing more than a chess piece in your wicked game._

\--

It’s your fault. He trusted you. He loved you, and you knew it so you used him, over and over, and now here he is, for you, because of you, and it’s your fault. It’s your fault.

You see him fold and fall out of the corner of your eye and at first you don’t register what’s happening because you don’t want to believe it.

Then you hear your name, soft and confused and hurting, in his voice. Your senses hone in and pinpoint it underneath all the other clamour in the room. And that’s all it takes, for your focus to change and everything else, every other goal to leave your head.

“Q.”

You empty your gun with four quick shots into four different men. You don’t wait to watch them hit the floor. Eve can deal with the rest of them. There can’t be many left.

When you reach him he’s on the ground, curled in on himself like a baby. He’s clutching himself and shaking, shuddering. You try to remember what it felt like the first time you were shot. Try to remember so you can imagine the pain he’s in. You can’t.

You ease him into lying down, trying to be gentle even though your heart is racing and it’s so hard to move slowly. You hush him like he’s a child. You murmur words you hope are comforting as you pull open his shirt and your fingers ghost over the red-black holes in his milk white stomach. He’s losing blood so fast, it’s everywhere. It’s soaked through his shirt. It’s all over his hands. It’s all over yours.

“It’s alright, it’s alright.  Look at me. Look at me, love, at me.  I’ve got you.  You’re going to be fine.”

You take his face in your hands and make him look at you. Your hands leave red prints on his white cheeks.

“You’re going to be fine,” you tell him. You lie. 

\--

_The second time you kiss him, he kisses you. You’re in the lift together and he’s been fidgeting anxiously the entire time, with his sleeves, with his cardigan buttons, with his glasses. It’s endearing, and you watch him squirm and you enjoy it. You have power over him and you enjoy it. You shouldn’t enjoy it._

_“007— Bond.”_

_His voice is a little too forceful with the effort it takes him to keep it from wavering. He’s not like this, usually. Usually he gives a fairly good go at standing up to you. It’s always impressed you a little, that he stands up to you._

_You look at him and smile that one smile that you know makes women swoon – and men, too, apparently._

_“Q.”_

_You say it like a question._

_He raises a hand and then lets it drop again. He frowns. He chews his lip. He opens his mouth as if he’s going to say something and then closes it._

_Just as the lift is slowing to a stop he stands on his toes, even though he’s barely an inch shorter than you, and he kisses your cheek. Then the doors open and he goes._

_It’s so sweet, so chaste and innocent, it makes you feel bad. It makes you feel guilty. It makes you feel… you don’t know how to feel. Like your chest is caving in. You touch your face where his mouth was and by the time you remember yourself the doors have slid closed and your stomach drops as the lift jolts upwards._

\--

You’re standing on guard outside a room he’s in with Eve, working on disarming the complex radio signal scrambler that is the whole reason he’s there at all. With the scrambler working the comms and trackers are useless, and you have no contact with headquarters whatsoever. Which wouldn’t bother you, would it, but they like to keep an eye on you, now, don’t they. They don’t like not knowing where you are. 

It feels odd to just be standing there, keeping watch for someone else. You feel a bit like a Rottweiler. You aren’t very sure that you like it.

Eve is supposed to be his date, which is almost laughable, but it’s what the situation calls for; it means the two of them can slip away with less suspicion, less raised eyebrows than you and he could manage. You had asked M why he didn’t assign a female double oh to the case instead of sending three of them. 

“You two work better together,” M had told you, and that took you by surprise, somehow. “You have… a certain chemistry.” 

You suppose that’s true. He seems to understand you just a little better than anyone else does, even if that’s not exactly saying much. And he doesn’t let you shoot him down, and he isn’t afraid to tell you off – and he likes you. You know he likes you. You suppose you don’t mind him too terribly, either.

And you suppose Eve is the one M trusts the most, now. You suppose she’s there to keep an eye on you. You don’t mind her. You’ve forgiven her for shooting you. You have to, when you think of how many deaths of your own you could probably be held responsible for, at least in part. At least she didn’t kill you. All she did was give you a little holiday, and maybe spur on your drinking problem.

You hear footsteps and duck into the doorway, hand on your Walther instinctively. You hear voices. You open the door you’ve been guarding as silently as you can, let it click closed behind you. You hiss a warning to him and Eve, but there’s nowhere to go, you realise. You hate rooms that only have one exit.

\--

_“He hates flying.” “Of course he does.”_

The three of you sit side by side on the plane. Eve by the window, him in the middle, and you in the aisle. So you can see how his hands are balled into tight white-knuckle fists on his lap to keep them from shaking. You can see how pale he is, how his jaw is tight, face drawn – he stares straight ahead and looks like he wants to throw up.

You put a hand on his thigh and it makes him jolt. He glares at you, but there’s no real conviction behind it.

You lean close to murmur in his ear and you hear his breath catch. 

“It’s alright,” you tell him, “Nothing’s going to happen. Try to relax.”

He keeps glaring, but he looks like he’s about to cry, which ruins the effect. You tuck back a strand of his mop of hair and feel him shiver.

“You’re going to be fine.”

\--

You stand in the doorway to his office and watch him for a minute, before he notices you. He’s standing in front of one of the larger screens, onto which an image of himself is being broadcast via webcam. It takes you a second before you realise he’s using it as a mirror. That makes you smile.

He’s looking at himself in a suit – the one you’d left on his desk earlier, because you’re a sly bastard. He’s looking at himself like he’s never seen himself before, turning slowly this way and that, frowning at the image of himself. He’s looking at himself like he isn’t sure what to think.

He looks perfect. The suit is black, because that’s what the occasion calls for, although you would have had him in deep blue. But he still looks perfect, sharper than ever, the black making his eyes and his hair seem darker, richer. He cards his fingers through his hair nervously and only makes it messier. He pushes his glasses up his nose, then takes them off, then puts them back on again. You hear him sigh.

You take a step into the room and it echoes and makes him jump. He glowers at you and his cheeks are bright pink. 

His crush on you is so obvious it hurts.

You almost feel bad for him.

“You look good,” you tell him, and you leave before he can argue. You can almost hear him fuming.

\--

_The third time you kiss him he’s full of shotgun shell and bleeding out and his face is damp and tastes like iron and salt. The third time you kiss him you’re convinced it’s going to be the last time while at the same time trying to convince yourself it’s not. His mouth feels frighteningly cold against yours. It makes you feel sick. Your mind flashes up images you don’t want to see, of crushing water, of white-blue skin, of cold stiff limbs. Your fingers twist tight into the fabric of his jacket. It’s wet. Your head spins. You’re reeling. It feels like falling._

_\--_

You’re smirking as he takes the dossier from you, his forehead creasing with confusion. The lines in his skin are always temporary; there are no permanent ones yet. He’s too young. Unsullied. 

You always have this strange urge to take his face in your hands and smooth the lines out with your thumb. 

“What’s this?”

You’re already on your way out, halfway to the door. You stop and look at him over your shoulder.

“Your first field assignment. Congratulations, Q.”

**Author's Note:**

> okay so in case it wasn't clear (it's hard to tell, with something i wrote myself you know) this is written in like, reverse chronological order. i don't know why! i also don't know why it's in 2nd person. i imagine it kind of as james talking to himself and blaming himself, like, an internal voice .. anyway. let me know what you think! because i don't know. it's a bit experimental.


End file.
